Kitchen Gadgets

I love kitchen gadgets, but only if I use them. I use my crock pot weekly year-round to cook beans (I buy dried) and multiple times a week during fall & winter to make soup. My veggie steamer / rice cooker also gets used regularly. My waffle maker was used weekly until it stopped working recently :(

Since Malcolm was around 8 months old, I started feeding him yogurt daily. I buy the 1-quart tub of organic whole milk plain yogurt from Trader Joe's on a weekly basis and it's come to the point where we are going through it in less than a week. I've been told by multiple people that making your own yogurt is really easy, but it seems like too much of a pain to me. However, after reading this post over at Crunchy Chicken, I am convinced that it's definitely doable with a yogurt maker. Making yogurt with a machine seems so simple, produces no waste and is cost-effective.

I'm going to ask Santa for this yogurt maker this year.

I have two kitchen appliances that I'd like to get in the habit of using more often. One: the juicer that Sherry gave us for Christmas. I need to get a container to store the juice in. I would love to break out the juicer daily for fresh juice, but the clean-up is very time consuming. Two: the bread maker that was a hand-me-down from Sunny. The recipes in the book call for a special yeast that I haven't been able to locate. Granted, I haven't looked too hard, but I should. I honestly just need to do a bit more reading on how to make good bread in a bread maker - especially with the continual rise on the price of bread.